The Juliet Spell (15 page)

Mom looked at me for a moment before continuing. “Do you at least know what a condom is?” she blurted out.

I blushed. Edmund didn’t say anything. And Mom, she told him exactly what it was, how to use it and why he was a damned idiot if he didn’t use them.

Edmund stood there with his arms crossed like he was too noble to know what she was talking about. The idiot.

And I sat there trying to look cool and cringing inside.

When Mom had finished her little lecture on twenty.first-century hygiene and the wonders of not getting girls pregnant, he turned to me, and said, “And ye, Miri. What would ye have me know?”

He looked as arrogant as Tybalt.

And I realized that I couldn’t say anything. Because what I wanted to say was unsayable, especially in front of my mom. A lot of things about Wrong Girl Versus Right Girl.

“Well?” he said. “What do ye wish me to know?”

And like magic I knew what I could say.

“I’ve got just two words for you,” I said. “Anne Hatha.way.”

And Tybalt vanished from Edmund’s face.

“Ye, ye know about that?” he stuttered.

“I told you your brother was famous.”

“But ’twas more than four hundred years ago….”

“Miri’s right,” Mom said. “Everybody who knows any.thing about Will Shakespeare knows he got Anne Hathaway pregnant and had to marry her.”

“How’d that work out for them?” I asked.

“None so well,” Edmund admitted.

“Okay, Miri. Do you have anything more you want to say?” Mom said.

I thought it over and shook my head.

“Then go back to bed while I tell Edmund a few more things. We won’t be long.”

I had to. Mom had cut me some slack, slack I mostly couldn’t use. So I got up and went back down the hall, wish.ing I could come up with a really great parting shot. Which I couldn’t.

I lay in bed wishing I’d had the foresight to bug our house so that I could know what Mom and Edmund were saying to each other right then. But Mom was telling the truth. It wasn’t more than a few minutes before I heard them both passing by my door on the way to their own rooms.

I punched my pillow and wished it were Edmund’s face. Then I punched it six times and wished it were Vivian’s.

“Damn Shakepeares,” I said.

The next morning, Mom and I got ready to go our ways while Edmund slept in.

We didn’t speak. We danced around, doing our morning routines as if we were two stars orbiting each other.

While she was standing over the stove, Mom said, “Are you okay?”

“Hell, no,” I said.

Mom sighed through her long, elegant nose. “Try to be patient with him,” she said. “He feels adrift. He’s trying to find something to connect to. Someone.”

“He’s got us.”

Mom didn’t answer me. But I knew she was not-saying “‘Yes. But he doesn’t want just us’, and meaning, ‘Honey, he doesn’t want you.’”

Damn, I was mad at her. Angrier than I was at Edmund. I ate my breakfast in three bites and got out the door four minutes early so I didn’t have to talk to her anymore.

I went through the day in a fire of rage. At least I didn’t have to see Vivian. We didn’t have any classes together. But Drew and I were in AP English last period.

I sat there tapping my foot while Drew explained to us this insight he’d had that the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckle.berg, which are part of an old sign in the dump in The Great Gatsby, are really a metaphor for the absence of God in the

post-World War One era. All very interesting and so totally Drew that I wanted to smack him.

And I must have been pretty obvious about it, because when class was over, Drew caught up to me in the hall and asked what the matter was.

“Nothing,” I snapped.

“Well, if it were anything, and I could help, you could let me know. Would a ride home help?”

“Sure.” I said this not because I wanted a ride but because I wanted to convince Drew I was okay.

So Drew and I headed over to the parking lot, where Bobby was already leaning against the 2CV.

“Hey,” he said.

“Dude,” I agreed.

Drew started for my place. We inched out of the lot and into the clumps of cars that choked the streets around the school.

We crawled down to the stoplight while kids on foot passed us by going faster than we were. None of us talked.

Finally we reached the light. It turned red as soon as we got there, of course. When, after a couple of hours, it finally turned green, Drew started out into the intersection. And from the opposite direction came some guy turning right in front of us, flipping us off as he went by.

Drew slammed on his brakes, and we missed the other car by a few inches.

“Whoreson heir of a mongrel bitch!” I shouted. And I stood up in my seat and flipped him off while I added a few more thoughts I had about him.

Drew let out a long breath, said something in a low voice and finished crossing the intersection.

“Whoa, Miri,” Bobby said. “Where’d you get that one? I never heard you talk like that before.”

But I wasn’t finished talking like that, and I went on screaming after the guy even though he was nowhere in sight.

Bobby started laughing.

Drew pulled over to the curb. “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m just perfect,” I snapped.

Drew put his hand on my wrist and I pulled away.

“Sorry,” he said.

Bobby leaned forward. “Wrong time of month?”

He sounded so damned smug, like he knew all about women from his vast experience of his Girls of the Week that it made me even madder. I lost it. I turned around in my seat and almost screamed into his face, “Edmund’s screwing Vivian.”

All of a sudden, Bobby didn’t look so smug. He sat back.

“Big whoop,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care, either, which was stupid. “I mean, how dumb is that? My stu.pid cousin comes over from England and immediately starts messing around with the understudy. I mean, I really thought he was smarter than that. But what really worries me is what happens if her dad finds out.”

“My guess is her dad knows as much as he wants to,” Drew said. “However much that is.”

“What do you mean by that?” Bobby said.

“I mean our Vivian is not exactly a blossom born to blush unseen. And her old man knows that, but doesn’t really want to know any more.”

“Ed’s still under eighteen, right?” Bobby said.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s good, ’cause if he wasn’t—”

“Our production could suddenly find itself without its leading man,” Drew said. “Hmm.”

Drew had said what Bobby was thinking. I was sure of it. Damn it, Miranda, why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut?

But it wouldn’t have mattered. By tomorrow night at the latest everyone in the cast would know about Edmund and Vivian. It’s always that way in theater. And Bobby would have been just as angry no matter how he found out. And he was furious, I could tell.

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right, Drew. That’s why I’m so damn mad. I mean, what is it about guys?”

The two guys with me didn’t try to explain what it was about guys that made them guys.

Drew drove me the rest of the way home.

“See you tonight,” he said.

I slammed the door of his car without answering.

Edmund was sitting in the living room with Mom’s old cassette player on the coffee table, and the TV on blue screen.

“Truly, cuz, I thought ye might be happy for me,” Ed.mund said when I walked in the door.

“Why would you think that?” I said. “I told you what kind of person she is.”

“Well, ’tis all one. A man must do what a man must do.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. In fact, it’s right up there with what my dad said when he left us to go find himself. Men. You haven’t learned anything in four hundred years.”

“Miri, if a man did not hearken to his heart, naught would ever happen in this world,” Edmund said. “Suppose my brother had stayed at home in Stratford instead of running off to London to act and write his plays.”

There was something in his voice that was pleading for me to understand.

I looked at Edmund sitting surrounded by strange things he hadn’t ever imagined could exist, trying so hard to com.prehend where he was and what he had fallen into. And an.gry as I was with him, I realized I still loved him as much as I had before. Maybe more.

“I’m just worried about you, that’s all,” I said finally. “About you, and about the play. I’m your Juliet, damn it. I’m worried you’ll do something stupid to mess up the pro.duction.”

“And lose me chance of being Romeo? I’d sooner turn Spaniard!”

I still wanted to strangle him. Or throw myself into his arms. Either one. But there was nothing I could do. What.ever Edmund and Vivian had set in motion would just have to work itself out. I sighed a deep sigh. “It looks like you’ve been working on your new accent. Want to give me a sam.ple?”

Edmund stood up and declaimed, “I’m sorry, Madeleine, but our relationship isn’t working. I’m going back to Eliza.beth. The new Dice-O-Matic chops, dices and purees any.thing in your kitchen in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee. Only sixty-nine ninety-five from your Dice-O-Matic dealer. Ken, we have a low front moving in over the weekend that should bring us some morning clouds that will burn off by midday.”

He bowed to me.

“What d’ye think, faithful spirit? Do I sound like a coun.tryman of yours?”

Actually, he almost did. His o’s were still too long for an American, and some of his m’s had a b-sound behind them, but it was a pretty amazing change.

“Just don’t forget your Warwickshire accent, my good fel.low,” I said. “I like it right well.”

“I shall keep it always, then,” Edmund said, and grinned.

The Juliet Spell

“I shall sound American only among strangers and sheriffs and suchlike fellows.”

And fortunately Mom came home then before I could say anything stupid. And in a few hours it was time to go to re.hearsal.

Chapter Seventeen

Vivian was waiting for Edmund when we got there and peeled him away from me.

Well, I had to expect it. I wandered around the stage like I was running over my blocking in my mind.

Gillinger strode into rehearsal exactly five minutes late. He had the smug smile I’d only seen on him when he was running tryouts. What could that be about?

“I have news that will be of interest to some of the younger members of the troupe,” he said. “I’ve just had a call from an old acquaintance at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. They are initiating a new apprenticeship program for high-school students next season. Two apprentices, a boy and a girl, will be selected each quarter to work at the Fes.tival as members of the acting company during the long va.cation, whenever that is for the school involved. So if you go to one of those year-round schools you may be going in the dead of winter, or the uncertainties of spring, or the va.garies of an Ashland autumn. Since Steinbeck is still on the old school year, anyone from here would be going in the summer. Which means you will face much stiffer competi.tion than you otherwise would.

“In any case, the apprenticeship is for two months, is ten.able only by students sixteen to eighteen, and can only be earned by nomination by a member of the Festival staff. Which means that one or more of them will be dropping by our little production to see if there is any talent in it. I men.tion this only because it may make some of you work harder than you presently are, which I can assure you, you need to do. All right then—”

I raised my hand.

“Yes?” Gillinger said.

“Excuse me, Mr. Gillinger,” I said. “Could you tell us something more about the apprenticeships? Would we be cast in plays?”

“Why, yes, Hoberman. I thought I’d made that clear. The apprenticeships will involve being cast in at least one produc.tion. There would be little point in an apprenticeship with.out it.”

Oh, my God, Ashland. Next summer. I saw myself there—with Edmund, of course; Vivian was dead— walking onto the stages where Mom had stood more than twenty years before, and working with the actors of the I-5 Reper.tory Company. Maybe even with some of the same actors my mom had worked with. Could anything be better than that? Could anything I could do say “I love you, Mom” bet.ter? My heart clamped down on the thought of that appren.ticeship and gripped it like a steel glove.

“Edmund. That’s us. Next year. It has to be,” I whispered.

But before Edmund could say anything, Gillinger was talking again.

“All right,” Gillinger said to the cast. “Let’s see how much you’ve managed to forget in two days. We’re going to run act one from the top to where we stopped.”

It was bad. Some of us acted like we hadn’t cracked open our scripts since Friday. There were a lot of mistakes, and every mistake needed its do-overs. It was nearly an hour be.fore Edmund had his first entrance.